How did the three missing women case impact Springfield's psyche?
Gregory J. Holman , GHOLMAN@NEWS-LEADER.COM Published 5:11 p.m. CT
May 29, 2017 | Updated Approx 10 am May 30, 2017
Link on 5.30.17 - http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2017/05/29/how-did-three-missing-women-case-impact-springfields-psyche/102117002/
Video - http://sgfnow.co/2rgYn6l
Janis McCall talks about her daughter Stacy, who disappeared 25
years ago along with two other women. Andrew Jansen/News-Leader
The 1992 disappearance of Sherrill (sp.) Levitt, Suzanne
Streeter and Stacy McCall prompted a mixed psychological impact on Springfield
and its community parenting culture, psychologists and longtime residents told
the News-Leader.
Kay Logsdon, a longtime Springfield resident who served as city
spokeswoman when the three women went missing, said that the disappearance was
felt as a "community crisis."
"My overwhelming memories are of the concern for the women,
concern for their families," Logsdon said. "And the hope that we
carried for them."
"I think everybody in Springfield put themselves in their
place," she added. "It was one of the first times when an abduction
hit home."
Springfield psychologist Deborah Cox said an unexplained
disappearance can create "collective anxiety" in the community.
"It's different from individual anxiety because it's
something shared," said Cox, a specialist in family therapy and trauma
recovery who was at Missouri State University from 1998 to 2009 before turning
to private practice.
The sense of threat induced by an event like the disappearance of
the "three missing women" is akin to the effects of a terror attack,
she said.
"Because it is terrorist activity," she added.
Cox said that it's common for people to react by saying, "Oh
boy, we better be locking our doors now, we better have a tighter rein on our
kids."
Meanwhile, collective anxiety may crop up when we least expect it.
"It might be invisible to us," Cox said. "We may
not know why we have a feeling of unease."
The emotions of every individual are affected by a planetary
network of human relationship ties, Cox said.
The flyer
for the three missing women, Sherrill Levitt, Suzie Streeter and Stacy
McCall. (Photo: News-Leader File Photo)
As such, collective anxiety can affect things like traffic
patterns, the atmosphere at schools, family life and relationships among
next-door neighbors.
Grant Jones, a psychologist with Evangel University who
specializes in PTSD and trauma disorders, posited a somewhat different view.
"A one-time event will have a novelty effect, but then it
will go away," he said.
He likened the case of the missing women to news cycles.
"It's a sensational thing, and there may be some effects like
9/11," he said. "People change a little bit, but within a year
they're back doing what they did before."
Jones believes there was not much impact from the 1992 case
because at that time the public was less aware of issues such as human
trafficking or instances of ex-spouses abducting children from schools.
In his view, most people could not relate to the situation, so
were less affected by it.
Stuart
McCall takes a phone call as Janis sits near on June 9, 1992. (Photo:
News-Leader File Photo)
Today, the public hears multiple story lines to the effect that
"the world is not safe for children," Jones said, citing awareness of
sexual predators and child abduction.
Jones cited the 2014 Hailey Owens case, in which a child was
abducted from near her northwest Springfield home before being sexually
assaulted and killed, as having a greater impact than the case of the three
missing women.
"So many people could identify with it," he said.
"It's a child doing normal outdoor stuff, and then she's gone. That's
scary."
"Any parent, grandparent can say, 'Yes, I've let my kids play
outside.'"
Still, Jones, who has been at Evangel 33 years, has memories of
the events of 1992.
Police detectives and a former prosecutor reflect on the 25th
anniversary of the Three Missing Women case. Andrew Jansen/News-Leader
"For me, it was like okay, where's the police in this?"
he said.
"There wasn't a sense that this was part of a larger narrative.
It was like, this is weird. This happens maybe in Texas or New York or
somewhere, but in Springfield, Missouri, that's bizarre."
Springfield native Mary Guccione remembers her family and friends
were abuzz about the case.
"(The case) affected everybody," she said.
She remembers when a Springfield friend called to ask her to put
up missing-person posters around Joplin.
Some of
the more than 30 officers investigating the disappearance of three women gather
for an afternoon police briefing by police chief Terry Knowles on June 10,
1992. (Photo: News-Leader File Photo)
Her church offered prayers for Levitt, Streeter, McCall and their
families.
She and her fellow parents began to wonder about how best to look
out for their children.
"Everybody's kids were graduating" when the women
disappeared, Guccione said. "Everyone was concerned about their teenage
daughters because they didn't understand what was going on."
Guccione said that despite this, she felt her friends and
neighbors reacted reasonably to the disappearance. She never had the impression
that "overinflated" stories were coming out.
"But the eyebrow was always raised."
Guccione added that she raised her children as she had been
raised: free-rein.
"I told them not to stray too far, always let me know where
they were going," she said. "The minute the streetlights came on,
they were to be home."
"It was very much a small-town type of childhood, and we knew
our neighbors."
Twenty-five years later, Cox, the psychologist in private
practice, believes the community continues to see effects of the case.
File photo
of the second investigation at the Levitt house on east Delmar. File Photo In
the photo are Janis McCall, center, Terry Knowles, then police chief, and
Meredith McCall. (Photo: News-Leader File Photo)
"Time doesn't cause anything to happen on its own," she
said. " But over time, other processes do morph the information."
People already prone to fear and paranoia "will be even more
stirred up," apt to "dig around" and make up stories to explain
mysterious events.
"On some level, we're all trying to make sense of it,"
she said.
Jones, the Evangel psychologist, concurred.
"When you're creating a memory and you don't have all the
details, you do memory reconstruction," he said. People add details where
none exist.
"You start to create something that might not be accurate
because every human being needs closure," he said.
"The longer it goes on, the more weird it may become, because
the traditional explanations don't work, yet we still want something to explain
it."
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